It stars Robert Donat and Deborah Kerr as a married couple whose relationship is shaken by their service in the Second World War.

The supporting cast includes Glynis Johns, Ann Todd and Roland Culver.

His hands are badly burned when his ship is sunk, but he stoically rows in the lifeboat for five days without complaint.

Robert and Cathy both receive 10-day leaves, but each dreads being reunited with the dowdy spouse each remembers and being forced back into the dreary life they shared.

For Cathy, the hated view from their flat, all walls and smoking chimneys, is a symbol of their lives before the war.

Outside, waiting in vain for a taxi in the bombed-out intersection, the argument continues—they even fight over where the shops were formerly located.

The sky is bright with early morning light, and beyond the shattered houses, the vista toward the river is broken only by a church steeple.

Cast notes Perfect Strangers was meant to be the first of a number of British-made co-productions between Alexander Korda and M-G-M. Other proposed projects included Lottie Dundass with Vivien Leigh from a story by Edith Bagnold, a biopic of Robert Louis Stevenson starring Robert Donat, a version of War and Peace directed by Orson Welles and starring Korda's wife, Merle Oberon, and an untitled Carol Reed project.

The delay had come about for several reasons: the script was constantly rewritten to account for changes in the war, Ruggles fell ill with the flu shortly after he arrived in England, and Donat was involved in a play.

As they set to work, Korda called the film an "allegory of England"; Donat said: "It's a lyrical comedy – we hope.

[7] No subsequent films came from the agreement, because Korda bristled at being bossed around by MGM's head of production, Louis B.

[9] In the New York Times , Bosley Crowther wrote the script was an intelligent treatment of "the simple and leisurely story" and the leading actors "excellent as the principals, who find that love, like devastated London, can be rebuilt".

[10] Clemence Dane won an Academy Award for Best Original Motion Picture Story for Perfect Strangers.